As a young man, Chicherin became fascinated with history; classical music, especially Richard Wagner; and Friedrich Nietzsche, passions that he would pursue throughout his life.

[2] After graduating from St. Petersburg University with a degree in history and languages, Chicherin worked in the archival section of the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs from 1897 to 1903.

He immediately used his new fortune to support revolutionary activities in the runup to the Russian Revolution of 1905 and was forced to flee abroad to avoid arrest late in that year.

He spent the next 13 years in London, Paris and Berlin, where he joined the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and was active in emigre politics.

Upon his return to Russia in early 1918, Chicherin formally joined the Bolsheviks, and was appointed as Trotsky's deputy during the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

In July 1918, his close friend, Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, became the new German ambassador after his predecessor, Count Wilhelm Mirbach, was shot in the Left SR uprising.

Chicherin also held diplomatic negotiations with the papal nuncio Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, on the status of the Roman Catholic Church in the newly formed Soviet Union.

On 10 April 1923, Chicherin wrote a letter to fellow Politburo member Joseph Stalin, in which he described the international political fallout from the recent show trial and execution in the Lubyanka Prison on Easter Sunday of Monsignor Konstanty Budkiewicz.

Due to the American people's outrage over Budkiewicz's execution, the meeting had been cancelled and the senator had been forced to indefinitely postpone the founding of a committee to press for diplomatic negotiations.

Chicherin also expressed fear that, if Russian Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon were also sentenced to death, the news would, "worsen much further our international position in all our relations."

[9][10] Although known for his workaholic habits, Chicherin was sidelined from November 1926 to June 1927 and from September 1928 until January 1930, while receiving medical treatment in Germany or in the French Riviera.

He used to patter into our room in his shirt sleeves, wearing a large silk handkerchief round his neck and slippers adorned with metal buckles ... which, for comfort's sake, he never troubled to fasten, making a clicking noise on the floor.

When Chicherin died in 1936, the official state newspaper Izvestia summarised his character by describing him as highly educated, an exceptional diplomat and a sophisticated art lover.